Territorial Planning

Territorial planning is a process of planning the entire territory of Lithuania in a complex way. It affects a large part of the population, the economic and social development of the area, the environment, and human health, and it is therefore important to balance the interests of all parties in planning territories. Unfortunately, the audit “Territorial planning” carried out by the Supreme Audit Institution shows that the current process does not ensure that all territorial planning documents are produced in a timely and qualitative manner.

A new public master plan is planned for 2020. The aim of this strategy paper will be to harmonise the various activities carried out in the country: agriculture, tourism, business, protection of cultural heritage, infrastructure, etc. To ensure the correct implementation of the document, it is important to identify and address the current territorial planning problems to avoid their repetition in the future.

“If we want people live in Lithuania with comfort, ensure that their expectations on the place of residence or the purchase of housing are not compromised, and the necessary infrastructure ensured, we need to have in place a properly functioning territorial planning process. Unfortunately, the process is not working properly,” says Julius Lukošius, Director of the Economy Audit Department of the National Audit Office.

As the audit results show, one of the main problems in this area is the lengthy process. There are several reasons for this. One of them is the use of automatic approvals. The inspection of 101 territorial planning documents showed that 12 % of them had to obtain planning conditions from the responsible authorities, but failed to do so by automatic approval. It is generated automatically where no decision is provided by the authorities within the time limit set. At a later stage, during the coordination phase, these authorities submitted the requirements and the documents were returned to previous stages of preparation. The cases examined showed that repeated applications increased the territorial planning process up to more than 20 times due to the automatic approval of the planning conditions or the coordination of the documents.

The second reason for the lengthy planning process is that different authorities are involved in the processes of issue of planning conditions and coordination of documents. For this reason, new requirements for the 8 % of the evaluated documents were introduced by authorities which did not participate in the preparatory phase. This has increased the document preparation process by up to 6 times.

Third reason: the deadlines for the stages in the final territorial planning phase are not respected. Almost a third of territorial planning documents were delayed by up to 234 working days. 240 % of territorial planning documents were delayed by 59 working days.

The audit has highlighted another problem in the territorial planning process - documents are not being properly coordinated with the public. The auditors were unable to ascertain whether the documents were actually being made public, such as whether they were published on the website and in the municipality’s notice board.

Following this audit recommendations, a system should be put in place to prepare territorial planning documents in a timely and qualitative manner.

This audit is the second in a series of audits carried out by the National Audit Office in the area of construction and infrastructure. Last week the results of the audit “Granting of construction permits and the compliance of the construction process with set requirements” were presented. Audits on the renovation of multi-apartment buildings, water supply and wastewater management will continue to be made public in the future.